Cathay
2023
Background
Cathay operates scheduled passenger services to over 60 countries in 190 destinations. Customers now can book flights, hotels, flights+hotels, activities & cars through their holidays category mostly powered by Expedia & Hertz. UXcel recently hosted a global design contest with the theme of designing a search & booking experience for discovering holiday events & experiences in customers’ preferred locations. Let’s assume Cathay plans to scale its digital experience for the future & experiment with it internally since Expedia & Hertz roughly charges 15%-25% for using their services. Due to limited time, I only focused on events & not the other experience categories.
Skills
Competitive analysis, Effort/Impact matrix, Interaction & Visual design, Prototype
Hypothesis
If customers try to look for events from the holidays category with Cathay, Then they may book based on their personal preferences. If customers try to look for flights from the holidays category with Cathay, Then they may add events based on their personal preferences.
Outcome
Conversion rates No.of flight tickets & events booked. I was shortlisted in the top 10% among 150+ global submissions. To continuously improve & evaluate the designs, Monitoring the task completion rates & using a mixed-method approach at regular intervals both quantitatively & qualitatively may further help in the future.
Apart from the standard flights+hotels, None of the competitors cross-sell other experiences
Competitive analysis
To understand how others approach this, I looked into 10 direct/in-direct competitors & below are the insights. British Airways offers events in some countries, Meet-up & Eventbrite are the only dedicated places to look for events as an experience globally. Thai & British Airways also offer other categories of holiday experiences in some countries. Emirates, Expedia & Trip in almost all countries, More than 50% of the researched competitor’s digital experience is needlessly complicated & outdated.
Features
British Airways offers book now & pay later with flexible instalments, Emirates offers tour guides & last-minute cancellations. Expedia & Trip provides last-minute deals for unplanned holidays, Meet-up & Eventbrite are personalised based on interests & current location.
Cross-selling avoids the need to research elsewhere, book elsewhere & may generate extra revenue
Validation
xxx
Value proposition
Flights are core to Cathay’s business,
High Effort / Low Impact vs Low Effort / High Impact
How might we help to efficiently find & book events as a holiday experience? How might we recommend events as part of holiday experience booking?
Goal
Our flight bookings from the holidays category will recommend events based on users’ personal preferences. This will affect users planning their holidays with Cathay by simplifying & elevating the overall digital experience. We will measure effectiveness by the number of tickets & events booked.
Identified key interaction touchpoints & established specific marketing & product success metrics
Landing page
Let’s customers book flights, hotels, flights + hotels, activities, cars & Redeem hotels, cars powered by Expedia & Hertz, Giving away 15%-25% of the total revenue. Let’s customers book flights + experiences ( Events to start with ) initially with a newly redesigned booking flow for validation. A/B Testing / Conversion rate.
Booking & Checkout
Since this was a competition with limited time, I wasn’t able to understand the existing drop-off rates & the reasons behind them, Simplified with some regulatory guidelines & best practices in mind. Events are recommended both for one-way & return trips & will work in partnership initially. Drop-off rate / Number of tickets & events booked.
Takeaways
Being fully flexible with the design process when faced with challenges & constraints, Research & testing are key to measuring KPIs for continuous improvement.
Testimonials
“Thank you for taking part in our very first design contest. It was truly a magical experience for us to gather people like you” Gene Kamenez / CEO & Co-Founder @ Uxcel